The latest edict from his government that Catholic schools will have to set up so-called gay-straight alliance clubs if even one student demands it, is divisive, dumb and unjust.

Divisive because McGuinty would never attempt this level of micro-management with the public school system.

Dumb because turning the issue of how to combat school bullying into an ideological bunfight between gay activists and the Catholic Church, isn’t going to address school bullying, which occurs for many reasons.

Unjust because it’s a deliberately provocative attempt by McGuinty’s government to interfere with the religious tenets of Catholicism, which opposes homosexual acts.

That’s completely different from endorsing the bullying of young people because they are homosexual, or for any other reason, and for McGuinty and Education Minister Laurel Broten to pretend otherwise is both disingenuous and politically dishonest.

By forcing Catholic schools to accept gay-straight alliance clubs, the Liberal government is throwing its lot in with gay radicals whose real agenda is simply to harass and attack the Catholic Church.

And with anti-Catholic bigots, who will use the Catholic system’s understandable unwillingness to roll over on this issue in order to call for the dismantling of the separate school system, not for valid reasons such as saving money, but simply because they hate Catholicism.

Whatever his motivation, it’s a dangerous game the premier is playing.

And it will do absolutely nothing to help students who are being bullied in schools — both public and Catholic — for all sorts of reasons, including, but by no means limited to, homosexuality.

The test of any school — Catholic or public — is not the name it gives its anti-bullying clubs, but whether the school and the school board seriously address all forms of bullying and take appropriate action against it.

Notice how McGuinty and his government have all but stopped talking about that?